Some systems collect metadata from remote servers. As used herein a server is a computer program hosted on a computer in a network, such that the program can serve metadata to other parts of the network. A remote server is a server that is hosted on one or more physical or virtual machines that are different from a physical or virtual machine that is requesting metadata from the remote server. Multiple servers may be hosted on one such machine (e.g., a file server and a report server may be hosted on the same machine). When metadata is to be collected from a particular remote server, a user can enter command line parameters for a bridge (a command that can be executed to retrieve data from a remote server), and the bridge can execute to retrieve the metadata from the remote server. The retrieved metadata may be used in various ways. For example, the metadata may be processed by a metadata service, which can provide information from the metadata in some useable form. For example, impact analysis and lineage (IAL) metadata is metadata that reveals how different computer components (e.g. different servers, different database tables, different database table columns, etc.) depend on each other. An IAL metadata service may collect such IAL metadata and provide information from the IAL metadata in some useable form. As an example, an IAL metadata service may allow the IAL metadata to be searched to reveal features of a computer system, such as information on how data flows through the system.